


Welcome to the Family

by bagog, ThreeWhiskeyLunch



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Blackmail, F/M, Overprotective children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 02:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11796660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagog/pseuds/bagog, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeWhiskeyLunch/pseuds/ThreeWhiskeyLunch
Summary: There are benefits to having the Shadow Broker in the family. Not all of them are good.





	Welcome to the Family

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> A treat for AcequeenKing. The plot bunny wouldn't go away.
> 
> I'm adding bagog as co-author, because the majority of the story idea was his. I just put the words in order.

  
The Shadow Broker’s new ship is sleek and light. Seen through the docking bay window, it reminds Zaeed of the original Normandy that he’d seen in images. He has no doubt the Shadow Broker had been able to dig up the plans for the old ship and have it built to spec, which may account for the differences in design.

Aethyta’s elbow knocks him in the ribs. “I’ve seen looser bodies in a morgue. It’s not like she’s a complete stranger.”

“That’s what has me concerned. And _that_ wasn’t when I was her impending stepfather. She’s gonna bloody well skewer me.”

“Ah, don’t worry, ya big coward. Little old Aethyta will protect you.”

Zaeed chuckles, humoring her more than just a bit. “I have no doubt, sweetheart.” Of the healthy respect he holds for all asari, that respect is quadrupled for the Shadow Broker.

The door to the ship opens in a whisper-quiet swoosh and Liara steps out, gathering Aethyta to her in a tight hug. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hey, kid. You remember Zaeed?”

Liara’s blue eyes turn from warm and welcoming to cold and calculating when they look in his direction. “Of course.” Her tone is pleasant, but there’s no way in hell he doesn’t recognize the protective family instinct kicking in on her part.

He resists the urge to cover his balls with his hands.

Five minutes after boarding the ship, Zaeed is wondering if jumping out of the airlock on his own volition might not be the wiser choice. The alternative is to stay and suffer through Liara’s overprotective urges regarding her father.

The father that Zaeed has been foolish enough to accept as his bond mate.

The father that had been estranged from her daughter for many years.

The father that Zaeed had managed to somehow impress enough that Aethyta had not only allowed him to take her out on date, but continued to correspond with and meet up with when they could over the next few years, in the midst of war and after, so that eventually they just got tired of beating around the bush and decided to just get fucking married. Seeing as how they hadn’t shot each other yet.

Liara’s hand slides up and around Zaeed’s elbow, catching him from following his future wife down the hall to the self-contained conservatory that Liara had promised a tour of. “We’ll be along shortly, Dad,” Liara calls after Aethyta. “I think Zaeed will be most interested in seeing the armory on the way.” Her voice is sickeningly sweet, even as her fingers dig into his flesh, along with a tingle of biotics that shock his nerve endings slightly. A threat, should he not behave.

Ah. So it’s like that.

Aethyta just waves, followed down the hall by Glyph. “Whatever. Don’t let him convince you he needs another sniper rifle. He has six.”

“Seven,” he grumbles. But who’s counting? He allows Liara to lead him through a side door into what is indeed the armory. He’s distracted for a moment by what looks to be an actual 1920’s pistol before her voice intrudes on his thoughts.

“So. Mr. Massani. You. And my father.” Her voice has lost the sweetness, taking on a rough, determined tone he damned well recognizes as being mimicked from a certain Commander Jane Shepard. He groans inwardly, but bites back the smart remark that’s instantly on his tongue.

Instead, he says, “Goddamn right.”

She leans back on a counter, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how...concerned I am about your relationship. And what your intentions might be?”

“Intentions? Don’t have any damn intentions. Other than to make your father happy. And keep her happy for as long as she’ll have me.” He keeps himself in check, taking a deep breath to try and quell his ire.

Liara’s eyebrows raise at that. “Ah. Well. Perhaps I can aid you in your endeavors. A little...fire under the feet, so to speak.” She reaches behind her and hands over a datapad. “I’m sure certain individuals would be quite interested in knowing more about your...checkered past.”

He laughs at that, shaking his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, sister. She knows all the dirt. Told her everything. Every job. Every bounty.”

“Oh?” She tips up the corner of the datapad, as if intending to take it back, but then flips it back down and waves it up and down in front of him. “And did you tell her about a certain ‘Dwight Mason’ and his achievements as the seventh grade Mathlete at Riverton Middle School? Or about how this same Dwight Mason managed to sweep the competition in the Middlesex Physics Olympiad, the youngest competitor to do so? Or how this young Dwight received the Newton Award in the sixteen- to eighteen-year old bracket for his invention of a self-contained neural network that even as we speak is being used in the Alliance’s VI’s?”

His blood chills at her words. “....you cold-blooded bi—”

“I think someone who wanted to maintain the illusion of a hardened mercenary might just want to know exactly who they’re up against.” She steps forward and presses the datapad to his chest. Her voice lowers, the pitch familiar when he remembers back to their chasing down the old Shadow Broker. “If you hurt my father in any way, shape, or form. I’ll come after you with everything I have. Including the record of a clean cut boy of a good family from Highgate.” She takes his hand and forces him to hold onto the datapad. “I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement. Can’t we, _Dwight_?”

“You two coming?” Aethyta is suddenly at his elbow. “I’ve looked at all the damned flowers, kid. They all look the same to me. Didn’t you say something about a drink?”

“I certainly did,” she says, her voice back to sweet and light. It chills him how he used to consider her a lightweight. Nothing like fighting through a war for the one you love to harden some of the edges. “Shepard is due back any time now. She said she’s bringing something special back from Earth, just for the occasion.”

Zaeed clutches the datapad tight in his fingers, following them out and down the hallway back the way they had come. He doesn’t wonder how Liara managed to find him out. She’d be a shitty Shadow Broker if she hadn’t been able to come up with something from his past. But he does wonder how what sort of information she’s put on this pad, and whether or not he shouldn’t just destroy it without even knowing. In the end, he decides against it, tucking it into his pocket for later.

“What was that you called Zaeed back there, kid? Damned translator must have glitched or something.”

“Hm?” Liara ushers her father towards a comfortable looking couch. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You called him ‘Dwight.’ That some sort of code word or something?”

“Oh! Well,” she glances at Zaeed, blinking at him with her large, blue cow eyes. “‘Dwight’ is...it’s a…” He swallows, preparing himself to be outed. But she surprises him in the next moment, “...an Earth term of endearment. Sort of like _sai’kaea_. Only...for family members. Or...loved ones. I was simply attempting to welcome Zaeed to our family circle.”

He stares at her, incredulous at her lie. Then sinks down with a sigh next to Aethyta.

“Oh, yeah? Well. Dwight. I like it.”

He secretly shudders, plastering a smile to his face, and resolves to not kill Liara.

He very nearly forgets about the datapad, which is to say, he manages to put it out of his mind for a while, remembering only when his fingers press the edges of the plastic. His mind worries it over before he shunts it aside. Nothing he can do about it right then, with Liara in his face and Aethyta at his side. But later, tucked away in one of the ship’s private cabins, he sets it on the bed when he undresses, listening to Aethyta croak out some krogan battle song in the shower.

He taps it to wake it, unsurprised when a fingerprint scan is requested. No use asking how the Shadow Broker managed to get his prints. A cursor blinks at him for a moment before —-Welcome Zaeed Massani—- scrolls across the screen. There’s one file on the desktop.

He turns his head and listens again for Aethyta. She’s moved on to something that sounds like varren in a blender, and just about as loud. He opens the file, dreading the worst. What he sees takes his breath away.

Picture after picture of himself. As a baby. A toddler. Five years old, hair slicked to his head, sporting a backpack and a big, stupid grin over his first day of school. Pictures of his mum and dad. Grandparents. People he recognizes, but can’t name. Seven years old and hugging their dachshund, Cannoli. Picture after picture, people coming and going: friends from school he hasn’t thought of in years, the sudden disappearance of his father when he was twelve, school events, family holidays, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Everything of his life up until he’s eighteen and dressed in fatigues, ‘Mason’ on his Alliance shirt pocket, his arm around his mum, his other holding out her phone— _“You do it, Dwight. You’re arms are longer.”_ \--as he snaps the selfie.

He sits on the bed, his legs giving out from under him. He swipes a hand down over his face, scrolling back to the top of the file and thumbing down through them again, slower this time. He gets lost in the pictures, forgets to listen for Aethyta, forgets everything but the memories that wash over him.

“Who the hell is the kid?” The bed sinks when she sits next to him, wrapped in a towel, peering over his arm.

He taps a picture, enlarges it. Green eyes stare up at him. His nose like a beacon. His mum always teased him that he needed to grow into that damned nose. “That...is me.”

“Yeah?” She leans closer, still damp skin pressing into his shirt. “Shit. Human offspring are ugly.”

He laughs. Points to another picture. “That’s my mum and dad. I was ten.”

“ _Kada_ didn’t fall far from the tree.”

“It’s the nose. Family inheritance.”

“And the eyes.” He moves on to another picture, himself standing on the school stage, accepting an award for something, probably something for math or science.

“So where’d this all come from?”

“Your daughter gave it to me. Haven’t ever seen a lot of these old photos.”

“Aw. See, my Dwight? There’s benefits to having the Shadow Broker in the family.”

He nods and wipes at his eyes, swallowing down the thickness in his throat. He doesn’t show her the last thing in the file.

~~~~~

_Dear Zaeed,_

_I confess I went searching the extranet for the worst with the express purpose of blackmailing you. But it appears you have done nothing to hide what you’ve done. I couldn’t find a single thing that would damage the reputation of someone as well known to be as ruthless as yourself. Until I found a disabled account on InstaBook under your mother’s name, and pictures of the fine, upstanding young son she was so obviously proud of. I have downloaded all the pictures she had saved and erased the account from extranet caches. You hold the only copy._

_Welcome to the family, Liara T’Soni_

**Author's Note:**

> Dwight Mason is all on bagog. You should thank him for that.
> 
> sai’kaea -- fair one; someone dear to you


End file.
